


Deathless Death

by ecouterbien



Series: Together Alone [4]
Category: The Drop (2014)
Genre: Cunnilingus, F/M, First Time, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Vaginal Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-03
Updated: 2017-01-03
Packaged: 2018-09-14 12:16:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9181066
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ecouterbien/pseuds/ecouterbien
Summary: The way she’s smiling at him makes his guts clench. His cock, too. Nadia stands up to go and pulls on her parka and, before he can think about it too much, Bob reaches towards her and pulls her into his lap.He wraps his arms around her waist, pulling her against him as her thighs straddle his. He closes his eyes as he kisses her, feels her fingers trailing up his neck and through his hair. He still doesn't know what to say. Pulling out of the kiss he rests his forehead against hers.“Stay,” he whispers hoarsely.





	

_And she carves her hips into mine_  
_like she’s Michelangelo_  
_and I’m something holy._  
\- Alex Thomas, "Anatomy of a Hook-up"

 

* * *

 

The first time Nadia sleeps with Bob there are new buds on the magnolia tree in the back yard: small and green, soft and ripening. Soon they’ll bloom white like oddly drawn stars, and make him think of snow that falls out of season.

They’re sitting in his kitchen swigging bud lights after taking Rocco for a walk. Bob’s thinking about how her touch sets his skin buzzing, ruing every missed opportunity over the past couple of weeks to ask her to stay and come upstairs with him. He takes an extra long gulp of his beer.

His hesitation unnerves him. He tells himself he doesn’t want to rush things, that being slow and methodical is his way. Put a gun in his hand and a stupid punk like Deeds in front of him and he's fine, but right now he feels as though his body is urging him forward in a direction that he doesn’t have a map for.

He’s good at reacting. Being quiet, making himself inconspicuous and paying attention to people’s moods had served him well when he was placating the Chechens and mopping up messes Marv had made. He could come in after everything was over and make it right, but could he hold a living body as easily as a dead one?

Comfort, habit, and guilt. That’s what had held him together all this time. And where had it got him? He’d been alone and lonely before he found Rocco and met Nadia, living in his parents’ house that felt more like a mausoleum than a home.

He hadn’t changed anything since they'd died and nothing bad had happened. Soon enough he became superstitious about it, let dust gather on cheap icon reproductions and gaudy plastic rosary beads before ever discarding their talismanic protection. If he didn’t let anyone close enough, he didn’t have to change.

But since Rocco, since Nadia, there's only the ache of feelings he hasn’t let himself feel breaking through the numbness he’s so carefully cultivated. It had always protected him, but now it was isolating him.

Rocco has long since settled in his cage, and is whining softly in his sleep. Bob wishes desperately that he was still awake, velvety snout nuzzling his palm, wriggling body a bridge between himself and Nadia. He has to do this on his own.

The way she’s smiling at him makes his guts clench. His cock, too. Nadia stands up to go and pulls on her parka and, before he can think about it too much, Bob reaches towards her and pulls her into his lap.

He wraps his arms around her waist, pulling her against him as her thighs straddle his. He closes his eyes as he kisses her, feels her fingers trailing up his neck and through his hair. He still doesn't know what to say. Pulling out of the kiss he rests his forehead against hers.

“Stay,” he whispers hoarsely. Nadia pulls back.

“What?”

He chokes out the words. “Stay. I want you to stay.”

“Ok” -- she says, slipping out of her parka and kissing his lips so gently he wondered if he’d imagined it -- “ok.” She gets up and makes her way up the hall, turning and waiting for him at the foot of the stairs.

When they get to his room he’s in a rush, because he’d always been in a rush before and his body didn’t know any better. She rests her hand on his chest until he slows down, takes his hand in hers and slips it beneath her clothes where he can feel the warmth of her skin.

“Don’t move,” she whispers.

He holds his hand there as she takes off her sweater, her t-shirt, her bra; guides his hand to her breast, squeezes his fingers against her nipple. She closes her eyes and lets out a gentle sigh, her hand falling away from his. He moves his other hand up so he’s cupping both breasts. His lips find the hollow of her collarbone, his tongue searching out the groove, licking up towards her neck where he kisses her.

She undoes the buttons on his shirt slowly, carefully. He feels a wave of softness spread through him, as though she’s undoing him with each deliberate movement of her fingers.

He cups her jaw with both his hands, lifts her lips to his and searches out her mouth with his own. She tries to pull his shirt off over his shoulders and he moves his hands from her jaw, shrugs it off and picks her up, swivelling around and placing her as gently as he can on the bed. It creaks and bounces beneath them as they settle on it and Nadia giggles through their kiss. Laughter spreads through his body as he works his way down hers, nipping playfully at her breasts, nuzzling the soft skin on the inside of her arm where, he finds, she’s ticklish. Her legs wrap around his waist, locking him in close to her.

Bob sits back on his heels, hunched over as if unsure of what to do next. Nadia reaches for his belt buckle. “No, no,” he shoos her hands away and rests his palms either side of her waist. He slides them slowly up her torso, enjoying the feel of her, his thumbs trailing over her belly, feeling soft skin pulled taut over hard muscle. He drags his thumbs across her nipples and she arches deliberately into his touch. He trails his mouth over her skin, beyond caring whether he’s kissing her or not. He just wants to taste her, make up for lost time.

She reaches down, this time for her own jeans, and begins to unzip them. Bob helps her slip them off, traces his palms along the length of her legs. The glow from the lamp catches the white scar tissue that criss-crosses her thighs; he traces his fingers tenderly over them, knowing better than to try and kiss them. When he’d tried to kiss the scar on her neck she’d flinched. _I’m not broken_ , she’d said, _I don’t need fixing._ He gets it, he has a past of his own, but his isn’t on the surface waiting to be prodded at and judged.

He’s relieved that she doesn’t recoil from this touch, at least for the moment. She reaches for his head, gently guiding it between her legs. Without hesitation he buries his mouth in her, she’s already wet and he inhales her salty tang as he works his tongue into her.

When he’s not watching her face to gauge her response he listens to her quickening breath, the moans escaping her lips, waiting for her muscles to tense up beneath his touch but they don’t so he draws his tongue in a firm deliberate stroke from her cunt to her clit and is quietly delighted at the spasm of pleasure it elicits from her. He continues circling her clit, bracing himself against her increasingly frantic writhing until she collapses, breathless, sheets bunched between her fists.

He slides up so he’s lying next to her on the bed, he didn’t realise how empty it had been with just him in it. Nadia rolls over to face him and slides her knee between his thighs until it nudges at the bulge where his cock swells against his jeans. She leans in and kisses him lazily. “Hmm, that was really good,” she whispers, breath hot against his cheek.

When Nadia slips her fingers inside the waistband of his jeans and begins to undo them he feels an urgency return to his body. She works his jeans and underwear down over his bum and starts stroking his cock, spreading pre-cum from the tip along the shaft with her thumb. The rush of her touch is intoxicating but he doesn’t want it to overwhelm him, not yet, so he bites down hard on his bottom lip and breathes as deeply as he can.

He gets a condom out of a box in the top drawer. It’s not out of date. He knows this because he bought it last week, wanted to be ready even if he didn’t know what else to do.

When she slides onto him his world shrinks and he can’t think of anything else but her. He’d blamed his loneliness on the smallness of his life: neatly contained in the few blocks between his house and the bar and Saint Dom’s but his world is even smaller now, bound only by skin and sheets and the soft glow of the bedside lamp, but he can feel eternity begin to stretch out inside of him.

Her touch is comforting, the warmth of her forehead against his shoulder, the taste of her sweat as he kisses her neck, her hair falling around her face and his as she sits astride his lap. It’s a cocoon he doesn’t want to leave.

Bob remembers the lessons from Sunday school, how God chose to make himself human. He’d forever wondered why, why would you make yourself human? Humans fuck up, humans kill other humans for no reason. But with Nadia’s legs wrapped around his waist, the smoothness of the skin on her hips, the way her tongue drags across his teeth, each sensation cascading into an overwhelming whole, he understands.

He closes his eyes, forehead pressed against hers, lost in the urgent thrumming of his heart, the hot clench of her around his cock, the lingering taste of her on his tongue.

“Where are you?” she whispers, rocking her hips slowly against him.

“I’m here. I'm right here.”

 _Peace be with you._ That phrase had always seemed like a cruel joke, what peace could he possibly hope for in this life? And yet, as he feels his heart-rate slow and the ease with which their bodies knit together as they drift towards sleep, he wonders if this was what it’d meant all along.

When he wakes up Nadia is still asleep. He watches her, the soft curve of her eyelashes against her cheek, the even rise and fall of her chest. She shifts towards him sleepily, nuzzling against his chest. He’s usually up by now, stopping by mass on his way to the bar, but he doesn't need to go to mass today, this is his place of worship.

He’ll phone in and tell them to manage without him. They'll be pissed, but right now Bob’s plans revolve around not leaving his bed, or Nadia, for the rest of the day.

He lies there, staring at the ceiling, remembering the night before. The softness of her breasts as he sucked and kissed them, the taste of her as he worked his tongue over her clit and into her cunt, the wildness of the moans he drew from her as he did it. He smiles to himself, bites his lip.

When his arm begins to ache from where Nadia still sleeps against it he moves slowly, reluctantly leaving the warmth of her sleeping body, and makes his way quietly downstairs; Rocco needs to be let out and given some fresh water.

“Off you go, that's it,” he says, gently nudging Rocco out the door with his bare foot. He turns on the coffee pot and puts two mugs on the bench. Bob watches from the window above the kitchen sink as Rocco, alert and energetic, sniffs his way around the yard with enthusiasm. Bob’s gaze rests on the magnolia tree in the back corner, too old now to ever die, and notices the first flowers are beginning to bloom.

**Author's Note:**

> beta-ing by [Splinter](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Splinter) (Thank you! Your help is, as always, invaluable.)
> 
> I hope you'll forgive me for messing with the timeline of the book/film/my previous fics in order to include the magnolia, which blooms in late winter/early spring: I just couldn't resist the imagery.
> 
> Yes the title is totally lifted from Hozier's "Take Me to Church".


End file.
